Prevalence of online cheating during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a disruptive force throughout the world, especially in the education sector where millions of students worldwide are unable to attend schools and universities. This has resulted in many face-to-face higher education institutions making a transition to online teaching, learning, and assessments. Since this change happened suddenly and unexpectedly, many of these institutions were not prepared for this change and did not have time to implement proper measures to protect the quality and integrity of their online offering. Academic dishonesty has become an alarming ongoing challenge all over the world and this trend has been magnified with online assessments during COVID-19. Therefore, it has become imperative to investigate the prevalence of e-cheating and the common methods of students used to cheat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a quantitative approach, an online survey was sent to Information Systems and Technology students at a South African University. Results indicate that students perceived that e-cheating was occurring through impersonation, accessing forbidden aids, peer collaboration and outside assistance. Technologies such as WhatsApp messaging, Google, online lecture notes, and WhatsApp calls or telephone calls were used to e-cheat. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.